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Heritage classified

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Origin and history

The abbey of Notre-Dame de Valsery, founded in 1124 by regular canons of the order of Prémontré, initially settled near the forest of Retz, on the present municipality of Cœuvres-et-Valsery (Aisne). Its permanent establishment in Valsery (vallis serena) was decided in 1153 thanks to the donations of Jean Leroux, seigneur of Saint-Pierre-Aigle. The abbey, consecrated shortly after 1226 by Bishop Jacques de Bazoches in the presence of Louis IX and Blanche de Castille, flourished until the ravages of the Hundred Years War: burned in 1359 by the English, then looted in 1414 by the Bourguignons.

During the wars of Religion (1567), the abbey suffered Huguenote abuses, although its 13th century choir survived. After two centuries of reconstruction (from 1585), the abbots of Lametz and Lorry completely re-edited the estate, closed in 1653. The capitular room, a jewel of the 12th century, remodeled in the 18th century, preserves illuminations and an original pavement. The abbey, abolished in 1790 and sold as a national property, saw its church and cloister destroyed in 1793. Its ruins were acquired in 1804 by Baron Charles Estave, who built a castle destroyed in 1918.

Today, the protected remains (wall of enclosure, cooler, capitular hall) and the cellars of the monastic hotel of Soissons (55bis rue Saint-Martin) are the last testimonies of this heritage. Since 1996, an association has been conducting excavations and restorations, revealing the locations of the abbey church and cloister buried under two metres of debris. The abbey also housed the burials of Marguerite d'Anjou (1299) and her daughter Catherine, visited by Charles de Valois in 1303.

The abbey was a major religious and economic centre, endowed with land by local lords (counts of Soissons, Vermandois, or Philippe d'Alsace). Its decline began with the revolutionary destructions and then the bombings of 1918. Recent excavations (1990–2020) and volunteer projects (via the Rempart association) help preserve this site, which has been listed as a Historic Monument since 1986 (vesges) and 1989 (cell).

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